Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes Sunday through Thursday with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

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21.4.13

Contracting endgame finds opponents' positions invalidated

Previously,
this space asked whether, as a result of a legislative initiative to insert
Louisiana’s legislature in administrative decision-making, the Gov. Bobby
Jindal Administration would play along or humiliate legislators. But the
actual rout that has happened and will continue to occur stems not from the
Governor’s Mansion, but from the power of ideas.

Last week, the Senate passed a resolution declaring that one of its committees
had to approve of any specified contracting activities for public hospitals.
Later, the House joined in with a concurrent resolution saying the Joint Legislative
Committee on the Budget should
do essentially the same, where now the measure moves to the Senate. These
were in response to the Administration’s negotiating with nongovernment
providers to run the hospitals, effectively becoming the last state to get out
of the business of running public hospitals.

Of course, as previously noted, these kinds of declarations are
entirely empty given the law and Constitution. Despite that, they got approval
as a kind of political fig leaf to hide impotence and to create the impression
among constituents that they were vigilantly protecting their interests. The
question became whether the Jindal Administration would aid in building this
image, which it might have if it could be assured that the faux vetting would
not turn into a gripe session or even (admittedly unlikely) symbolic rejection.

The answer came when Jindal pointed out this emperor had no clothes
with his statement he would follow the law, not the resolutions. That
humiliation, however, means little to the wider world outside of those
well-informed about Louisiana government and politics (such as many readers of
this space), where, if the subject ever comes up, legislators opposed to the
idea of contracting out charity hospital operations will explicate it in a way
that makes them look like guardians of the public weal. The larger humiliation they
suffer comes from the rejection, if not discrediting, of their agenda and
worldview behind it.

For the issue first and foremost for opponents never has been so much of
concerns about cost and quality of care as it has been the use of
government-owned and run hospitals as a tool to accumulate political power and
credit. Those representing areas with these hospitals, their ranks supplemented
by a few others ideologically wedded to the idea that government should provide
cradle-to-grave maintenance and supervision of people’s lives, have used this
provision of service as a means of convincing enough of the electorate that
their positions in government were crucial to meeting this need in people’s
lives. Additionally, they could make claims that they were instrumental in
continuing to provide jobs.

Now with the job supply totally divorced from any connection to their
governmental position and with most of the funding authority taken out of their
hands, these politicians can claim little in the way of credit for giving
people medical care, leaving them one less avenue to convince voters of the
need to have them in office. Their fellow travelers who ideologically worship larger
government also suffer defeat of their ideas with the rolling privatization of hospital
operations that will conclude in a matter of months. These are the genuine, if
never admitted, reasons why they have tried to prevent this natural evolution.

Worse for them, predictably the first
of these efforts – actually the most extensive of all as it concerns not
management but the closure of a hospital, the only one planned because the Earl
K. Long facility in Baton Rouge was in such disrepair the clearly cost
effective solution was to farm out all activity to the nongovernment sector
rather than renovate or rebuild – so far is succeeding as planned. Early
indications are the nongovernment sector is responding to market forces. For
example, nongovernment hospitals in Baton Rouge are picking up the slack with little
difficulty, and the institution winning most of the state government contracted
services, Our Lady of the Lake, responded to health needs by opening up a
clinic in the area near where the deteriorating hulk of EKL is, and processing
more efficiently provision demands, to the benefit of clients and taxpayers.

Over the next month-and-a-half while the Legislature remains in session,
perhaps a small amount of rhetoric will emanate from the defeated about legislative
oversight, putative Administration high-handedness, and dire, unrealistic predictions
about this issue. But observers never will witness the real sting that they
will suffer privately and among a few confidants over the next months and even
years, as the real world, courtesy of a transformative governor and his legislative
allies, invalidates their ideological prejudices and delegitimizes their political
positioning.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Your next-to-last paragraph is a series of blatant misrepresentations and inaccuracies, none of which you can substantiate, but upon which you base your conclusions.

You clearly show your absolute bias in this way - it makes your posts clearly of no value (unless you are syncophant of, as Robert Mann very accurately depicts, our "petulant governor and his vindictive staff."

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